I have the idea that every week I should offer up a few thoughts on my reading of the Bible and maybe we can share some learning about the meaning of the Bible and of some passages in particular.
I am going to start over the next few weeks on Friday or Saturday offering up some thoughts on the first chapters of the our Bible, Genesis Chapters 1 to 3. That’s the story of the creation as you probably know and it is worth a careful reading to make sure you hear what the Bible says and not hear it through a cloud of argument about this and that. Online you can read through the passage here, paging through Genesis chapters 1, 2, and 3.
http://bible.oremus.org/?passage=Genesis+1
Just to kick us off let me say a few things that I wont do and then share a few thoughts on why we need to know these chapters well to understand the meaning and purpose of our faith.
What I won’t do is spend a great deal of time taking one side or another on the creation vs. evolution debate. First of all the arguments here are now so sophisticated that the layman (yup, that’s you and me) have little chance of grasping what is being argued. Secondly, in any case these arguments are off the point. There is an apocryphal story of the great Swiss theologian Karl Barth responding to a woman in his audience after she raised the question, “do you believe the serpent spoke?” Barth replied, “it doesn’t matter whether the serpent spoke, it matters what he said!” In other words the message our elders in the faith wanted us to be wrestling with is, why is being like God so appealing to us (Gen. 3:5), what does that tell us about who we are? That is a more important question than whether there was a talking snake in a garden a long, long, time ago.
The other thing I wont do is spend any time talking about who wrote Genesis other than assuming, as the church has done from its inception, it was Moses. I appreciate that it is widely accepted that a collection of writers brought together what we read now as the first 5 chapters of the Bible. I also understand that knowing the motivations of this collection of writers and editors helps us see what the scriptures are there to tell us. But, with all of that said, for my purposes I can leave that behind me.
So, what will a bible study on the first three chapters of the bible be about? Well as a taster of what you can expect here are five things that we should see coming out of these pages of the scriptures.
Number one, the necessity of creation. As we go through these verses what we will see is that creation, and our being created beings, is at the very, very, heart of our story. Everything in the world is made for us and we are made for God. Wow!
Number two, the purpose of creation and God’s purpose for us within creation. As the account of the garden of Eden becomes more familiar too us we will see in that place a picture of what God wants for us.
Number three, a vision of heaven. And of course if the Garden of Eden is what God wanted for us he hasn’t changed his mind. We will find in the Garden a picture of what our ultimate destination will be like.
Number four, a clear picture of our sinfulness. Too many of us think of sin as “what we do”. We don’t play nice with others. Our story here will show us that our problem is way, way deeper than that. We are out side the wall, in another country. And without help we are not coming back.
Number five, God’s continuing commitment to creation. The last word will be with God. He says within the first 3 chapters of the Bible that his will for us will not be thwarted, that the Garden will be our home, and he is guaranteeing it for us.
Yup, all of that from 3 chapters of the Bible! No kidding, these are some of the most important words of the Bible and we lose sight of what they are saying to us if we only think of them in the very narrow field of view that is the debate between creation vs. evolution. So, next week we will start with the virst few verses, “In the beginning ……… “